As a person in his 15th year of a progressive illness and now mostly bedridden, I consistently found men more likely to show real compassion for what I was going through while I could still work - my feeling was that most of them could easily and genuinely put themselves in my place. To most of my female coworkers, I felt like I was much less of a reality. While they'd be quick to make the requisite polite verbalizations, there was, unlike the men, rarely any follow up such as how have you been doing lately, anything come of that last doctor's appointment etc...

A lot has been written about men's objectification of women and rightly so - men have held more power and more harm has come of it. But I think women objectify men too. Never realized it till I got sick.